The US defense secretary has revoked plea deals with alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two alleged accomplices.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked plea deals reached with the man accused of masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two accomplices, just two days after announcing a deal that was supposed to have taken the death penalty off the table.
The deals, which involved Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered one of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants, were revoked on Friday after angering some of the victims' relatives.
Austin also relieved Susan Escallier, who oversees the Pentagon's Guantanamo war tribunal, of her authority to enter into pretrial agreements in the case and assumed responsibility himself.
“I have determined that, in light of the importance of the decision to reach pretrial settlements with the defendants … the responsibility for such a decision must rest with me,” Austin said in a memo to Escallier.
“I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements you entered into on July 31, 2024 in the above-referenced case,” the memo said.
The Pentagon announced the plea deals on Wednesday but gave no further details.
The New York Times reported that Mohammed and his accomplices, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi, had agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy in exchange for a life sentence, rather than face a trial that could lead to their executions.
Mohammed is the most high-profile inmate at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, which was set up in 2002 by then-US President George W. Bush after the attacks.
He is accused of masterminding the plot to crash hijacked commercial passenger jets into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks, as they are known, killed nearly 3,000 people and plunged the United States into what would become a two-decade war in Afghanistan.
The cases against them have been bogged down in pre-trial maneuvers for years while the defendants remained detained at Guantanamo Bay.
Much of the legal dispute has centered on whether they could be given a fair trial after being methodically tortured by the CIA in the years after 9/11.
J Wells Dixon, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented defendants at Guantanamo as well as other detainees there who have been acquitted of any wrongdoing, had welcomed the plea deals as the only feasible way to resolve the long-stalled and legally complicated 9/11 cases.
On Friday, Dixon accused Austin of “caving to political pressure and pushing some victims’ families over an emotional cliff” by rescinding the plea deals.
